One Thousand Candles
by Laziness Incarnate
Summary: Four years of birthdays, and not a single candle lit for Sai. Contains spoilers.


**One Thousand Candles**

"Happy twelfth birthday, Hikaru."

Akari shoved a small package into his hands. The gift wrap was yellow with white polka dots, and on top of it was a lopsided, obviously handmade bow. Hikaru had a bad feeling about this.

"Uh, thanks," he said, sounding rather lame even to himself. "Can I open it now?"

Akari nodded. She had cute ribbons in her hair (yellow, with white polka dots) and a cute smile on her face, and did he actually just think that? Why was everything so cute today?

He tore open the package in a totally un-cute fashion (rip rip tear rip), and took out the yellow...cloth? hand rag? whatever it was that was hiding inside.

"It's a, uh, a...really nice!" Hikaru stuttered.

"It's a face towel," explained Akari. "I made it myself. Or, well, I made this part myself." She pointed at the stitching in the bottom right corner of the towel. It almost looked like a rabbit. A _cute_ rabbit.

Hikaru felt panic surging through his chest and knew he had to do something fast. "Aw man, Akari, why'd you have to make it so girly? I mean, a rabbit? Are you blushing?" He peered at her face inquisitively.

"No, I am _not_. And I made it a rabbit 'cause I couldn't think of anything else."

"You could have made it a soccer ball or a baseball or whatever."

"I thought of that, but you're not in any clubs so I didn't know what sport to pick."

"Any of 'em would've been okay. Anything'd be better than a rabbit."

Akari's face was definitely red now, but Hikaru was pretty sure it wasn't from blushing.

"You're so stupid, Hikaru."

He went home that day with the face towel tucked into the bottom of his backpack, where no one could see it.

* * *

On his thirteenth birthday, Akari gave him a light blue handkerchief embroidered with two go stones, one white and one black, tastefully packaged in a gender-neutral silver-gray gift bag.

"I made it in home ec," she told him.

He stuffed the present into his pocket but let the end hang out. "Your sewing has gotten a lot better," he said to her as way of thanks.

On the way home from school, Sai went on and on about how nice it was of Akari to go to all that trouble for him and wasn't he lucky to have a friend like that. Hikaru got the feeling Sai was hinting at something, but he was pretty sure he didn't want to know what that something was.

"It's a lot better than that dumb rabbit towel she gave me last year," said Hikaru with a shrug.

"The one in your bathroom? But you use it all the time."

Hikaru suddenly felt an urgent need to change the subject. "Hey, when's your birthday?"

"I don't remember," Sai huffed.

"Oh."

"Our calendar was different from yours."

"Oh."

"But I remember Torajiro's birthday."

"Oh?"

"The fifth day of the fifth month," said Sai. "On that day, the Emperor would sometimes grace us with an invitation to his gardens, where we would walk the shaded pathways and feed the carp under the bridge-"

"I'm home!" yelled Hikaru as he stepped into his house.

That night there was a fancy dinner and fancier presents, and at the end of it all there was a sumptuous seven-layer chocolate cake, waiting just for him.

"I wish I could do that," said Sai as Hikaru blew out the candles.

* * *

Hikaru's fourteenth birthday was on a Wednesday, which was significant only because it was not on a Tuesday or Saturday or Sunday. Hikaru had pro exam games on Tuesdays and Saturdays and Sundays.

"I don't have time to go out for dinner today," Hikaru told his mom. "I played a game yesterday and I'm exhausted from school."

She made the tutting sound she'd been fond of making lately. "This exam you're taking is too stressful for a junior high student. I hope it's worth it."

"Hikaru," Sai warned. "Don't make that face."

Hikaru felt the whole birthday thing was rather lame this year. His father was working late again and his grandparents were visiting his relatives in Kyuushu, so it wasn't like anyone was around to celebrate with him.

His mom tried to fix things by plying him with presents and being unnaturally cheerful. She cooked T-bone steak for dinner, even though Hikaru told her he'd rather have something more digestible (like ramen), and then she sang the happy birthday song for him in bad English (probably because he had an English test next week) and made him blow out the candles on his cake (as usual).

"Did you make a wish?" she asked as they ate.

"'Course," said Hikaru. He'd wished to pass the pro exam.

"How's the cake?"

"Good. Thanks, mom," he said before she could cut him a second slice. "I've got to go do my homework now, catch up on the stuff I missed yesterday."

He pretended he couldn't see her disappointed look as he left the table. What right did she have to get upset, when he was working so hard every day? And he was voluntarily going to do his homework even!

But when Hikaru got to his room, he seated himself not at his desk but on the floor in front of the goban. Sai wordlessly took his place on the other side and said, "This game with Isumi on Saturday is an important one."

"Yes," said Hikaru. "I don't have time for anything else right now. If I can beat Isumi-san, I'll be one step closer to Touya."

Sai had that look on his face, the one that meant he had something he wanted to say but wasn't going to say it.

"Spit it out," Hikaru told the ghost.

Sai hesitated, then said, "You're growing up."

"Duh," said Hikaru as he placed three black handicap stones on the board. Of course he was growing up. He was getting stronger all the time. And then he stopped thinking about what Sai had said, because he had too many other things to worry about right now.

* * *

On his fifteenth birthday, Akari approached him after school and handed him a small box bare of wrapping or decoration. Inside was a watch, a nice one, "to make up for me forgetting your birthday last year," she told him.

"Thank you," he said, and for the first time in his fifteen years of birthdays he really meant it.

"I wanted to give you something hand-made, but..."

"Don't worry about it. You spoil me way too much. Hey, your birthday is in May, right? Sorry I missed it again. I was...distracted around that time. I'll get you something nice next year."

"You don't have to," Akari protested, but she seemed pleased.

"After all these years I think you deserve a little something. You've been a good friend to me, even when I was..."

She gave him a lopsided smile, and he thought of yellow ribbons tied with clumsy young hands. "It's okay. Just come play go with us once in a while and I'll be happy."

Later, his family took him out to a nice teppanyaki place for dinner, and afterward they went home for cake and presents. His mother and grandfather had gotten him a book of kifu, while his father gave him an envelope with five thousand yen enclosed.

"You should have invited Akari," admonished his father.

"I did invite her," Hikaru replied, "but she has cram school tonight and a math test to study for."

"Shoulda brought your pro friends too," added Hikaru's grandpa.

"I didn't want to invite Waya and them because they eat like pigs."

"Nah, I meant you should've invited Touya Akira!"

Hikaru laughed. "No way! You don't invite your rival out for dinner when you have a game coming up. Besides, today's a day for family, right?"

He saw his mother smiling at him out of the corner of his eye.

Before falling asleep that night, he slid open the window beside his bed. He felt a cool breeze against his face - the first stirrings of autumn. He sat on his bed and gazed at the sky as his curtains billowed gently around him.

"My birthday was pretty quiet this year," he said to the night air, "without your noisy questions."

The night air gave no reply.

"I don't want gifts. I just wish you could see all these stars with me. It's so clear tonight. You know what I learned in science class a while back? A lot of these stars are already burned out. But their light is so strong I can still see them."

Hikaru scratched his head. "You never did remember when your birthday was. You never got your own cake and your own candles."

He imagined all those little fires flickering, a thousand candles strong, a thousand years extinguished in a single careless breath, existing nowhere now but in his memory and in his go.

"Hey, guess what? I'm playing Touya in two weeks, second round of the Meijin preliminaries. First time I'll be playing him without you there."

Hikaru heard the longing in his own voice and wished he could hear something to answer it.

"Anyway, I guess I have to say goodnight, Sai."

With that, Hikaru closed the curtains, closed the lights, closed his eyes, and blew out the candles one last time. Somewhere above him a star shone brightly for a single dazzling moment, before fading away to nothing.

-End-

* * *

Author's notes:

I actually did a significant amount of research for this fic. Well, significant by my reckoning. I is lazy.

Hikaru's birthday is on September 20, which I'm sure everyone but me already knows. Figuring out what was going on in Hikaru's life on that date every year was a big pain in the ass, especially for his fourteenth birthday when he was taking the pro exam. The pro exam schedule is in chapter 86 of the manga, FYI. Hikaru's fifteenth birthday was also a headache, and I couldn't narrow down _exactly _what he was doing at that time, but I was able to figure out that his first real match with Touya was coming up.

The story events timeline and the annual events timeline on the website Crystal Moon were extremely helpful for figuring out all these damn dates.

I also took the trouble of looking up Shuusaku's birthday before remembing that it is, of course, May 5. (headsmack) A couple of websites told me it was June 6, but that date was calculated using the modern calendar rather than the old lunisolar calendar of Shuusaku's time. Gave me a right headache it did.

I also tried looking up birthday traditions from the Heian era and Edo period...but I couldn't find much and eventually said to hell with it. If any of you know anything on those subjects, do please let me know.


End file.
